MacSpeech Dictate Reviews

[russell]

Ok,

Here's an early review :

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/reviews/dicta tors-joy/2008/02/06/1202090429161.html

A very positive one.

More to come..

[tpf1952@mac.]

A long time Dragon user, I've been using MacSpeech Dictate for the last three days. First, the bad news: Dictate is not yet ready for the user who wishes to make corrections. I'm assuming that would be just about everybody Who uses voice recognition software as a part of their work life. Also, Dictate does not allow you to "train it" by dictating challenging words or acronyms. However, it does allow you to enter new words by selecting them from a text edit window, or by scanning the content of individual files.

For those of us who have enjoyed the PC platform and Dragon naturally speaking, we will likely miss not having the option to simply tell the software in one keystroke to go through our entire documents folder or our e-mail client. It's going to take more time than that.

Now the good news: Dictate is a fast learner. Dictate recognizes acronyms with much greater accuracy than PC/DNS. Even simple functions like "wake up" and "go to sleep" seem far more responsive and what I have experienced on the PC platform. With each new file by create using Dictate, I make a point of having Dictate learn its contents so I can speed up dictates accumulation of the database it needs to be of value to me.

When a user reviews a common voice commands, the dictation commands and all the rest that are listed in Dictate, it suggests that the ability to edit your copy by voice is already embedded in the program. It's not. After you think you have done some successful cutting and pasting, the results of some of these operations tend to annex themselves to your new text. The the only satisfactory way that I have discovered to restore the performance is to save and close the file to which I'm dictating, reopen, and continue.

Regardless, Dictate is wonderful. I will have to temper my expectations that the geniuses at MacSpeech will produce an upgrade with fully functional editing capabilities in just a few months. Even if it doesn't happen, Dictate has reached the point where practical voice-recognition in the Mac platform is now a reality.

Tom

[russell]

Excellent review and information. Keep your observations coming.

What sort of hardware are you running it on ? Microphone?

Im told the correction function will be available very soon...

[tpf1952@mac.]

Currently running MacSpeech on a new Macbook w 4GB RAM. The mic setup is a bit unusual. It's a broadcast quality, condenser, cardioid pattern Sennheiser that passes through a phone coupler on it's way to the mini-plug input on the Macbook. This configuration allows me to record interviews over the phone and then transcribe them on the Mac without having to reconfigure all the hardware.

I've also ordered a second copy to run MacSpeech on my MacPro. Unlike Dragon for PC, there's no flexibility on the single-license MacSpeech. The cost of doing business, I guess.

Tom

[russell]

Iv been using it for a few days on my macbook. Its working very very nicely actually.
Its missing a few features compared to dragon but they are coming..